This invention relates to a sheet film cassette with several compartments, each to respectively receive a sheet film.
In a documentation system which operates with sheet films in cassettes, and in which the individual sheet films in the cassette are automatically found and transported onto the film stage of a sheet film reader, a host of data have to be stored for each cassette. First, an index list is required, from which the individual sheet films can be selected. Furthermore, information has to be stored concerning the state at any given time of the individual sheet films. This is, for example, absolutely necessary for an active film, on which data are gradually recorded until its film field is fully used. To add to such an active sheet film, the respective point must be found again beyond which the film field is still free.
Cassette-specific data have hitherto been stored in the memory of electronic data processing equipment. This requires considerable memory capacity in the electronic data processing equipment, which capacity is often not present or is used for other purposes. It must also be considered that, as in a file cabinet, memory capacity for the data for all expected sheet film cassettes must be provided from the beginning, and is at first not fully used, but frequently is found after a relatively short time to be too small, or else is always unnecessarily large and hence expensive.
To avoid these disadvantages, it is known to store the data associated with the individual sheet film cassettes respectively on a magnetic tape cassette. The memory capacity of the electronic data processing equipment is then not required. However, it is a disadvantage here that a given magnetic tape cassette must be associated with each sheet film cassette and, just as the sheet film cassette, has to be stored and can be inadvertently associated with the wrong sheet film cassette.
Because of its small data capacity, a bar code would not by itself be able to receive the cassette-specific data; hence, a bar code system is not usable in conjunction with a cassette filing system.